Turn of the Century
by Ozeal
Summary: 1898; a deadly game of cat and mouse is played across London, and at the heart of this web of lies and deceptions are the two greatest assassins to have graced the dirty city's streets. Legends among men, they are known as fire and ice, dawn and dusk, Widow and Hawk. Instigated by an alcoholic detective with a score to settle, featuring soldiers to scientists to royalty. AU, CxN
1. Chapter 1

The whole fiasco started in a brothel, as many things so often did.

Rowdy music played half-drunkenly in the background, filling the clamouring airspace of the Red Room, shrieking in rough time to the women dancing in the middle of the room, spinning their skirts, flashing ankles left and right, forced smiles plastered over their faces to compensate for their fatigue, and purplish-black bruises mottling their pale skin..

She viewed this scene from behind a grimy window, cloaked in the shadow that the desperate light from a streetlamp attempted to banish, futile in its efforts. The silent cold bit like meadow insects at her exposed neck as she impatiently adjusted the raggedy cloth concealing her face. She was normally a woman renowned for her patience, but not on nights like this, where the stars fell from the sky as not-quite-snowflakes; the sleet that was an omnipotent companion for London's ever-bitter January.

The inebriated fool unlucky enough to have her tracking him stumbled out of the door, letting a morsel of lamplight and the squeaking jig of the fiddle sneak out into the night, bathing a momentary glow onto the otherwise deserted street. He slumped onto the doorpost, still light-headed, each step carrying his great unsteady weight as he stumbled down the cobbled alley, not even bothering to straighten his cravat or pick up the fallen ha'penny that jangled out of his silk-lined pocket.

She slunk, catlike and shadowclad after him, stalking through twistedly unhospitable alleyways to find the spot where he would meet his demise. Skulking windows loomed down onto at her from all sides, but the cover of shadowed darkness rendered useless their peering eyes draped with old washing and smears of shoddily-discarded human waste. This wasn't normally where she would tend to deal with the recipients of one of her 'specific' skill sets, but it was on her way back home anyway, and the backstreets were always a preferable location in which to dispose of someone.

Ahead lay a filthy gutter polluted with the stagnant air of a storm drain leading off the sewer, brimming with scraps of refuse and litter indiscernible in the halflight. Before the target turned a corner, still singing softly under his breath, a knife was stuck in his back. She had aimed off centre deliberately, and off target was where the blade had struck, catching his stomach bloated with drink and rich food, embedding its wicked teeth into the side of his ribs. His lifeblood sprayed out from behind his sharply tailored suit, splattering the back wall of an ugly brickwork block that served as residence for the impoverished masses.

She went through the typical regime of a kill; roughing the body up a bit, making the death appear like the work of a street fight or mugging. The purse was cut away from the belt, an embellished wedding band slid reluctantly off his finger, the expensive shoes of supple calfskin leather removed and thrown over a wall, to become the property of whoever came across them in the morning. Noiselessly, she slid the body into the gutter and hurried on her way, cleaning the knife in the process, wiping the blood off until it caught the light of a nearby candle, alone and aloof in someone's window. Glaring in her eye, the reflection showed back to her one of the two images she draped herself in; the black-clad, vengeful huntress of the night, the veiled assassin. The Widow.

The room where she was currently residing, the top floor of the run-down brothel where she had started out her journey, was a little under a quarter of a mile away, but closer when taken via a route sprawling over the rooftops. She hadn't the inclination to walk tonight; besides, the moon was veiled under the blanket of smog that served as the night air for this stinking city of industrialised luxury and sin. It wasn't as if she would be seen by onlookers other than the rats and crows. Scaling up one of the generic, faceless buildings, she prowled across the slates and guttering, letting the grey sleet settle in her veil, the water seeping through the finely spun blackness and soaking her hair.

The apartment was a simple leap across two roofs, the space between them, three storeys below merely another alleyway inhabited with beggars and thieves, cripples and street harlots. Only those with nowhere else to go settled out here in the last wasteland of the city streets. Her eyes lingered over the poor crowd attempting to warm their numb fingers over a sputtering, asthmatic flame that tried to spark life back into swollen joints, to no avail. She looked away and jumped over their heads, as the shadow that appears out of the corner of the eye that only exists for a fleeting second before it ceases to exist.

The spartan window was bare, aside from a piece of ragged cloth swaying slightly, to keep the onlookers' hungry eyes away. With the grace and poise of a ballet dancer, she swung her slight frame through its confines like a feather floating on the wind.

The room inside comprised of a simple, bare four walls and a basic wooden frame that served as a bed, off the floor, away from the vermin that dared not appear within a certain radius of her. It was almost as if even the pests knew of her deadliness, and gave her a wide berth because of it.

They may be carriers of tuberculosis or parasites, but she brought death itself in her wake. They were wise to avoid that.

Her bag was unceremoniously dumped beside the bed, spewing its contents forlornly onto the floor, lying in an entropic heap as the assassin made her way around her room, checking for people, traps, threats of any sort. This nightly patrol was never regular; patterns meant routine, routine meant predictability. Being predictable would get people killed, most notably, herself.

As the room was being scoured for dangers, she pulled off her exterior layers, then proceeding to untie the numerous knots, both decorative and practical, that adorned her corset. It fell to the floor, and she gratefully exhaled, letting her diaphragm expand properly for the first time since dusk. The time now was easily into the little hours of the morning, and though she could run efficiently on little to no sleep, it was always preferable to get a decent night's rest; tiredness dulled the senses and lowered the efficiency of the mind. She could best most men in this city without trying, but in her line of work it was always sensible to be prepared. There were faceless people out there, void of identity, enemies… rivals.

Stepping daintily over the creaking floorboards, she wrapped her slight form up in a blanket, embracing the comforting warmth it brought, the silken, finely woven cloth draping around her like the priceless dresses of royalty, the shimmering sheen at odds with the roughly-hewn edges of the room. The floorboards creaked with age, almost in a perverse protest to her satisfaction.

She all but fell onto the bedframe, cushioning her head with her arms, making a bony pillow to protect her nose from the hardwood headboard. She hadn't had nearly enough sleep last night, twisting the cover around her body until it felt like she was being strangled by a furious boa constrictor of blankets and sheets.

It wasn't as if she couldn't afford better. Her shadier line of work paid exceptionally well; those foolish enough to cross her never had enough time to proclaim a desperate farewell to their families, let alone hide the missing half of a payment from a vengeful widow. _Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned._ Or, a woman not paid on time.

She left herself with that thought as she allowed her consciousness to shift into the hallowing ethereality that was the momentary lull of sleep before troubled nightmares began. She never slept easily; that would be too much of a reward with someone with a tormented, twisted ledger like hers.

The dreams were normally very similar, allowing her no more than four hours of rest before her light sleep denied her any more respite from her ever-burning, long-suppressed conscience.

Always the same; never any less haunting.

_He sits on her windowsill. There is little illumination; the stars are veiled, the lanterns of the gods concealed by a pair of titanic wings that blot out the rest of reality. No city, no people, just the two of them. All she can pick out in the nyx blackness of the dream are his eyes, burning hollow with the grey fire of Hades like a starving, soulless hellhound._

'_Still a whore. Still a murderer. Still unredeemable.'_

_And she pulls the many layers of bedclothes against her naked form, as if to protect herself from this angel of death's cruel smirk, but all he does is smile, like he can strip her apart with his bared eyes._

'_You're a waste, Natalia,' She flinches, instinctively as a reflex, while panic threatens to surge through her systems, ripping its way down her spine and tensing every honed muscle in her body. 'All men are born equal, they say. But you… you have managed to sink so much lower than even the lowliest of slaves, the dirtiest of prostitutes, the cripples, the invalids, the sinners that will burn for an eternity in the land of the Everlost.'_

_There is a terrifying conviction in his voice that is so retrograde to the hollow emptiness she feels, the lack of any emotion, the hateful nothingness that forever preying on her mind, always there, always niggling and eroding at the half-shattered fragments of her psyche._

_He slides off the sill with uncanny ease, and through the window she can see nothing, and everything at the same time. There is no consciousness, and yet the essence of infinity ripples through the air, crackling like lightning on a stormy night, the atmosphere electrically charged._

_He slowly pads towards her like a lithe, feral predator, each shadowfall of a step lighter than the words he whispers into the air, the feathers that adorn the tips of his wings as they brush at her unguarded shoulders, each tender touch leaving an angry red scar, lacerations that tear apart her soul and burn at her porcelain skin, unwinding her._

'_Think upon your sins, Widow.'_

The crows that lined the windows suddenly cawed in near-perfect unison, rudely, insolently, interrupting her dreams with their shrill, high-pitched calls, jolting her awake and breaking the fragile surface of the fragmented non-reality that had been her dream, now lost to the momentary waking amnesia.

She was silently reassuring herself as she diligently practised and refined a fighting drill, each move strongly controlled yet venomous and vengeful, lips pursed as she so often did when she was thinking or concentrating, as the dawn broke over the city.

A screaming voice resonated through the house, a shriek that she had grown so accustomed to, but despised so much with every fibre of her being.

'Natalia!'

Soon, she reassured herself, soon she would strike out on her own; find a life of her own, maybe return to her Motherland. For now, though, she was stuck in the intricate system of whores and assassins, a brittle world broken and splintered more often and easily than children tore spider's webs apart with sticks.

She dressed, making herself look relatively presentable for yet another day of repetitious tedium that was laid ahead of her, and scuttled down the stairs to the ground floor. A blonde girl no more than a year younger than her, fellow housemate and occasional companion, though mostly rival, shoved the redheaded woman as she descended the stairs in a frill of ego and impatience, malicious intent driving the action. Natalia would have fallen, if not for her sense of balance and agility, and with a vengeful hiss, she flew towards her, hair splaying out like flames round a fire, and wrapped her arms around the younger girl, allowing herself a hint of a smirk as the blonde fell, her palms flying out to the ground to break the descent. She left the fallen woman to complain as she turned her back and glided out of the corridor like a ghost.

She peered out of the windows as she neared the end of her scurried run down the uneven steps to confirm the knowledge of the silent wanderer that acted as both saviour and bitterest of enemies.

He was there, silhouetted against the skyline like a celestial guardian. As ever, the sun was at his back, his eyes invisible past the hood drawn up to hide his face, a longbow sticking out from the back of the cloak that draped him in shadow, as if he'd been impaled.

She held what she hoped would be a stare into his eyes, before a hoard of young girls, most no older than fourteen, threatened to sweep her off her feet if she didn't fly along with the rest of them. She hated turning away, almost as if she was losing a battle; she had never aspired to liking psychological power games, and as much as she was a master of applying them, it never gave her any thrill aside from the hollow sense of victory that always came with wiping another pathetically futile being off the face of eternity. As she caught snatched glances out from the crosshatched, greasy glass, the observing figure perched on the nearby rooftop disappeared like a forgotten dream, melting back into the fabric of the building like a shadow, a figment of the imagination, a man that, by all rights, didn't exist, and never would in the reality outside of the taunting nightmares.

She let her expression fall back to a blank slate, to be etched with whatever malleable façade she was expected to put up that day, and allowed herself to slide back into the inhuman persona, the spiderlike legend that was the Widow.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Welp!**

**Just… wow? Followers? Reviews? It's like Christmas! (Or Hanukah, or whatever floats your boat)**

**Thanks to all that are following/reviewing, it means a lot and gets me motivated, if only to write a few words a day :3**

**Please accept my sincerest apologies about taking so long to update; I've been juggling exams and jobs and illness and other people's kids, (not literally) but I should be back on track to do at least a chapter a week.**

**Erm, that's all for now, I guess. Sorry for the wait y'all. Have a great weekend, and enjoy!**

**-Oz**

~.*.~

Another projectile bottle flew through the air like a ground-to-air missile, its glasswork trajectory arcing in a curve headed for the wall.

The dull sheen rippled as the fragile surface came into contact with the wallpaper, the righteously rigid form shattering upon impact. A small trickle of whatever toxic substance was left inside its glassy confines escaped as the bottle smashed, running down in shallow rivulets that pooled upon the hardwood floor like miniature alcoholic oases in a desert of sober mahogany.

Despondently, he let his arm drop to his side, listlessly allowing it to transition into a limp limb of uselessness, hitting the side of the chair with a light thud, any sensation long dulled away by the cushioning booze that made him forget who he was, the wretched little hellhole of existence he occupied.

'Shall I clean it up sir?'

'Screw you, Jarv.'

'Very well sir.' The family Stark's butler was a diligently mature gentleman of many years, and having served the failing house for more long summers than he could care to remember, knew the inhabitants rather well.

At least, the inhabitant. Singular form. The lazy, good-fer-nothing waste of space that was Anthony Stark. He knew what they said. Drunkard, his co-workers- now ex-co-workers- used to claim, muttering disapprovingly over bundles of faceless paperwork and official files holding glimpses into stories that tableau newspapers would kill like baited bears to get their grubby paws on.

What else did they call him?

He didn't know.

He was so silently cooped up in his own mindless universe of festering self-pity and poisonous loathing that he couldn't even begin to recall what they had said just short days before, their painfully concerned faces etched with shamefully poorly concealed disgust, eyes unsure whether as to pretend that they were at all enamoured with the pitiful idea of his fractured, ruptured wellbeing now that he could no longer be a financial asset to them. Bastards.

'Jarvis, another.' He could hear his voice slurring under the inhibitions of the drink, each word clumsily slipping into each other like ungainly ducks sliding on a frozen lake gripped in the throes of icy midwinter. When the butler hesitated at the door for a second, pausing to look at his charge with an expression unreadable to Anthony's intoxicated, addled brain, he screamed irrationally, like a desperate animal being backed into a corner by a predator, a creature that makes their struggle dominate their entire field of being, making one last, frantic struggle for the futile hope of survival.

'Sir, I fear this is becoming detrimental to your-'

'Don't even **speak** to me! Get **out**! You son of a **whore**! I'll rip your throat out- I'll- I'll…'

Anthony sprung up off the armchair he resided in, but failed to stay on his feet for any longer than a fraction of a fleeting heartbeat. His ankle gave way beneath his unstable bodyweight and failed in channelling his misguided anger into anything other than failure. In the end, it stopped trying to keep his form upright as it let itself go with a quiet, popping _crack_ that was painfully loud in the eerie quiet that reared its sinister head between his mangled sobs. 'Jarv, I'm sorry… just leave me here-' a strangled, twisted sob left his throat, causing a muted shard of pain to fly up his neck, catching in the larynx and leaving him short of breath. '…Leave me here to die, J.'

'Certainly not sir; I deplore you, please, co-' Jarvis was cut off by Anthony's head lolling to one side like an over inquisitive pigeon, though at an angle that was, quite frankly, disturbing.

'Sht'p. Tell Pep I- Ah, fuck it, fuck it, I just… just…' Eyes rolled backwards in his skull, the tense body of Anthony Stark suddenly fell limply into the folds of sleep, a quiet snore slipping from his parted lips like a secret muttered in the night.

~.*.~

There was a definite throbbing in his temple as he came to. Well, throbbing was an understatement. In all honesty, London's premier marching band was parading through his head like it was the bloody diamond jubilee all over again, their instruments each inflicting a pounding rhythm that pulsated in his crown with every laborious heartbeat.

He couldn't face the prospect of opening his eyes, instead leaving his eyelids to lie over the bloodshot spheres of sight like the blanket that covered him as he laid spread-eagled on the floor. Adjusting slightly, shifting his body over the thick carpet that adorned the floor, he buried his fingers in the thick refines of the material, exhaling evenly, nose pressed into the rug to calm his raging heartbeat and haggardly uneven breathing.

The last night was shrouded in his memory in a sordid haze of malediction and self-loathing.

Slowly easing himself up off the floor and pressing his fingers into his temple, massaging the region to try to banish the pounding residue of drunkenness, he gradually motivated himself to open his eyes, letting the penetrating rays of the herald of the dawn momentarily blind him.

Shrugging off the alcoholism, or at least, attempting to, he pushed himself to an unsteady standing pose, leaning against the doorpost for support, like a wooden lifeline. The bustling sounds of London beginning to stir echoed out from behind the window, the pre-dawn risers on their way to work, the hasty scuffing of ratty street venders placing their wares out on display, the noise of a city waking and embracing the opportunities that the day readily presented. He stared wistfully out from behind the glass, glazed eyes taking in the scene, forgetting it all in an instant. He had more pressing matters on his mind.

She had died. He had watched her succumb to whatever ailed her; it seemed so mundane, so akin to tuberculosis, but more violent, more terrifying, the poison running up her skin and constricting her fragile, porcelain windpipe in its snaking, tendrilous path.

Of course it was foul play. She was too full of life for anything else. Of that he was certain. Who would want such a gentle, calming figure as lady Potts to be wiped off the face of the earth he did not know, but he was determined enough to find out.

But first, the tang of brandy tainted the air. It helped him think, if only by clouding his mind. Just-

'Good morning Anthony. I take it you slept well?'

He whirled around, the room continuing to spin even after he had managed to steady himself again, grasping the doorpost like before and ignoring the splinter embedded firmly beneath a raggedly bittern fingernail. Eyelids squeezed together to calm the psychedelic lightshow playing over his retinas, he sighed, letting his breath flit out into the stuffy atmosphere of the room.

'Jarv? Did I… did I go off again?' He needn't say more, the unspoken communication between the two enough to express his desperate plea, the resigned knowledge of what, deep down, he was already painfully aware that he knew.

'I'm afraid so sir.' The butler, as sharply dressed as always, set down an enamelled tray; the day's breakfast placed on the table with a certain poise at odds with the man's elderly, shaking hands. A newspaper, the edges crisply ironed, blared out the date printed in contrasting raven ink heading the page: 18th February, in the year of our Lord eighteen ninety-eight. The front page was still crying out the sinking of the USS Maine, over the Atlantic in America.

As if understanding Anthony's reluctance to read, the scrawling script still an indecipherably blurred mess, the gentleman slid the newsprint away from the table. 'Will that be all, sir? You seem pensive; it appears as if you wish to take a moment to yourself. If you need anything, I am just a call away.'

With that final remark hanging in the air between them like a marestail cloud, the door was shut with a definitive clunk, the brassy doorknob catching the light streaming into the window like some celestial entity coming to rid his soul of his pestilence of stubborn insobriety.

Ah, sod it. He'd given up on a god helping him out long, long ago. Besides, he was a Stark. He could achieve the greatest of things, if only he bucked his ideas up, drove them to some sense of meaningless purpose.

He needed a distraction from this anyway. Jarvis was right, it wasn't healthy.

It was because of this that he stood, half an hour later, having combed his wild hair into some semblance of acceptability, driven the persistently foul stench of whatever he had consumed last night in a drunken stupor off his breath, instead letting it steam in front of him as he stood outside the metropolitan police headquarters, coat collar turned up as a defence against the biting wind that snuck down the front of his shirt. He hadn't bothered to put a jacket on; everyone there would instantly dismiss him, or judge him for the worst regardless, no matter what sort of a front he put out.

As if on cue, a young doorman peeled back the oakenwood door, inches thick and reinforced with cold, faceless steel that riveted the ebony in place. The man's eyes were shifty; he appeared to have been caught off guard, like a thieving man caught in the act of emptying a jewellery box, eyes open, unable to begin to comprehend the sight before him and vehemently denying it to be true.

'It's courteous in this region to invite a man in, I believe.' Anthony's tone was sharp, almost venomous, but with a self-assured edge that cut into the kid's already unsure demeanour. 'Just let me in. I have business with Fury.' Before the doorman had time to react, he was pushing past him, not altogether impolitely, but with enough force to still convey his intent, imposing a sense of importance.

He knew the route well; he had been summoned more times to that emotionally arid room more times than he could care to remember. As a result, when he strolled into the personal office of Commissioner Fury, the temperature seemed to drop several degrees, and the balance of power, previously held by the imposing, eyepatch-donning, trenchcoated police chief seemed to shift, suddenly leaning towards the scruffy millionaire like gravity had gone wrong. Needless to say, Fury was displeased.

'Superintendent Sitwell, would you excuse us for a minute? A certain Mister Stark seems to think that his time is more important than yours, and while that may not be the case, I think he needs the idea of being dismissed drilled back into his thick skull,' the officer left the room, shutting the door behind him, but leaving the latch on, catching it on the doorframe so the sound of Fury's surely oncoming rant would echo down the corridor. To be honest, Stark didn't care. Let them hear.

'I told you that you were dismissed, Stark. How many times must you come whinging back to me like a petulant child before you realise that I don't give a shit?' The black man's voice was rising with each word, displeasure emanating through the room and out into the rest of the building like a tsunami, sweeping everything out of its path and becoming the sole focus of the world, primordially raging and unstoppable.

'Fury. Nicholas. Old Nick.'

'Commissioner.'

'Commodore. Whatever. Listen, I'm going insane back there; have you any idea what its like-'

'I do.'

'-to need to be _doing_ something? Could you stand back and watch the Whitechapel shenanigans happen-' a low, animalistic growl elicited from the police chief as Anthony rambled on. 'Oh… did I strike a nerve?'

'Stark. Listen. Shut your mouth and hear me out. You are a liability to us. You're volatile, at the moment, you're obsessed drowning your sorrows in whiskey and as a result, you're nowhere near the standard we require you to be at if it is your will to go chasing homicidal murderers around our hellhole of a city. And as a side note, your self-proclaimed "people skills" are so rusty that you make the Brighton pier look like it's just come out of the ironworks.' He finished with a sweep of his coat, letting it evoke a halo around him like the wings of a great vulture.

'Will that be all?'

'Fury I-'

'Thank you for your time.'

'Son of a-'

'Thank you Mr. Stark.'


End file.
